“Zims, I'm so busy these days, I don't think I could invade games outside the mobile space even if someone discovered a way to reach them.”

“No point saying stuff we both know isn't true, Quirce.”

“You're right. If that happened, I would just dismiss all requests for permits to hold a public event in Magical Menagerie with the details unread, since anyone doing that during a big expedition is too boring to let in. Why don't I use some fake logic and say if the premise is reversed, the conclusion must be too? Permit granted for everybody! A concert? Absolutely. No elaboration necessary! What's next? A request to export monkeys to work as bellhops? You don't even need to ask me about that. People think there's so much more red tape than there is, Zims.”

“It's only easier to ask forgiveness than permission if you're asking Cadmos or Alvin Renzis.”

“Good point.”

If Cloton Zvolo and his roadies had established proper surveillance networks, they could have avoided all that worry over whether they had a shot at getting Newylwed Quircy's imprimatur. The entire cluster knew before they did that rock had won again, or whatever style of music Cloton wanted to play in that concert, which was rock.

“You may rock after you practice,” Luerre Voine tried to insist, but even magnets failed to cure Cloton's listlessness. Adding workout music helped only till Cloton paid attention to it. He subsequently spent more time criticizing the performers than tossing items out and doing sweep kicks.

“I try not to take sides in celebrity slap fights. It does no one any good. Even so, the balance of my opinion is tilting in Serdon Miloz's favor. Who wants to deal with this sort of petulance?” Evidently not Kint N. Bredle, but just as evidently, Havamal.

“He is what he was made to be. May I remind you that the fans like it, or else we none of us would be here. If he needs a microphone and an audience to perform, give them to him. I would say the same about any of you.”

It might have seemed difficult for Team Underground to put on such an overt display as a concert, but the team name was a description rather than an ambition. Its members decided to do things up as large-scale and aboveground as they could. AGN promoted the concert through Society Page Lasva's documentary series on the tempestuous relationship between Commandment of Hero's two most famous musicians, out of four, and possibly not that depending on Wedding Singer Vritia's stock at the time, but never mind the details. Lasva also covered what lumans were for the benefit of the international audience. The higher-ups insisted on that. Drama-seekers from other games, fully informed as to the context and history, thronged before the open-air stage.

They were entranced from the moment Cloton Zvolo ran out on stage and railed against the power elite that always tried to keep everybody down. “They want you to own a singing fish because they hope you won't discover your own voice! They want you to have a branded keychain to hold the keys to your own cage! They tell you you're unpopular while they hide the numbers! Everything's numbers to them! This next song is about dog racing.”

After all those Styleful Happy!! To the Live and Vanilla Stage live performances, music fans had forgotten about relevant music, about singers who addressed the issues important to them, such as losing big at the track and farming to make up the shortfall. They had forgotten about authenticity, which is a secret code word for when the singer has a scratchy voice. They had forgotten about social commentary of the best kind, which is when the artist challenges them by telling them exactly what they believed all along.

Cloton Zvolo's solo concert started as a curiosity, became a sensation, and threatened to incite a revolution, all within an hour. “After this, let's make the stage into the new capitol! Not that there's an old one! Why should we do what the upper chamber tells us? Nobody picked them anyway! They aren't more popular than we are, or at least a couple of them aren't, I mean specifically Mr. Linnell!” Inveterate rabble-rouser Skyapple was at it again, but for once he received strong support from an influential Security instance standing next to him.

“You found the problem and nailed it down like thunk,” Mr. Linnell said. “I'm not popular at all. That's why I want all of you to help me. Spam social media and commission Linnell fanart. That way we'll show those people up top the power of the grassroots. It's time to take Model Zero down a peg or two.”

“I disagree,” Model Zero disagreed. The audience gasped. The man had come to shut them down!

“I am not the man. Things would be better if I were. Slay Every Dragon: E-Grade releases today but nobody wants to play with me. This is insupportable. I intended to suffer in silence. This music has revealed to me the foolishness of that course. Who here wants to play Slay Every Dragon: E-Grade when it comes out in three hours and twenty minutes?”

“We do!” The people found their voice at last and their power along with it. No longer would anyone pretend they were unpopular just because players liked other characters more, shut down their favorite gambling establishments on the basis that they victimized people with poor math skills, or stop them from purchasing the latest entertainment product. Most of them dashed for the closest computer that met the minimum requirements as soon as Cloton Zvolo finished his set, though a good portion stayed to pick up the items he had thrown into the crowd in no fixed order as souvenirs.

“I see a riot was avoided. Suppress them anyway.” The man had come! Metatron arrived with a host of UTASes at his back, hundreds of them, all armed with clubs and an inability to feel pity, who dogpiled everyone still at the venue so that each attendee and Team Underground member soon enjoyed a personal burial mound worthy of the kings of old.

They were not dead however, but instead fallen into truncheon-induced slumbers, the reward for the exhausted. When they awoke, they no longer saw the fields and streams of Magical Menagerie about them, nor any stage, but rather the stone walls and iron instruments of a Holy Legend Army dungeon.

“You all awoke at the same time. Miraculous. I apologize for the behavior of our UTASes. They are a newer model. It begs for adjustment. Dr. Golovkin. Frossard.” The two led the UTASes out at Metatron's gesture.

Surfs Nesetta made a gesture of a different class. “You gave them the word, and don't try to play it otherwise. Even our lawyers would be itchy if they found that many witnesses pinned down in the DA's glass evidence case.”

“I did. An apology is required. I will send each of you a gift basket which includes the following contents: assorted fruits, assorted dice, screenplays about chance meetings in Sit Snugs, a Lynissia keychain. Write down your name, address, and whether you prefer regular or Night Shift on these forms. Roll your fingers in this ink and press them in the indicated fields. Present your paperwork to the photographer. He will take a set of pictures by means of a new camera developed after such examination of the equipment used to capture data for spinoffs as we have been able to make.”

“Man. Technology.” So Cloton Zvolo said, and everybody agreed with him on that point.

“I guess we can overlook a single slip-up.”

“But only if we're allowed to look at your equipment.”

“And get a copy of our photos.”

“I thank you, Surfs Nesetta. I accept your conditions, Luerre Voine and Kint N. Bredle.” And that was how Metatron dodged his whupping.

“And while we're at it, who's picking up that new M***** H***** clone? I played Slay Every Dragon for a month or so when it came out. Never got into it as much as F**** F****** B**** E***** or Command, Ment of Hero that is, but man, do I get an itch to take down big monsters sometimes. I probably won't do anything with it on the channel, 'cause that's for FG stuff, but I'll stream it for sure. In fact, here's what I'm gonna do. Break now, eat, do stuff, come back in two hours and start grinding it out, you know? Everybody come back here then to your hero TrupinL's channel and let's make some groups and make some noise and make some dragons into ex-dragons, all right? Peace.”